From Albert Svent-Gyorgyi's presentation to the Nobel Committee in 1937 before his award for the Nobel Prize. Notice the comments on the vitamin P component. C, I'm sorry, is not ascorbic acid.
...At the time that I had just detected the rich vitamin content of the paprika, I was asked by a colleague of mine for pure vitamin C. This colleague him- self suffered from a serious haemorrhagic diathesis. Since I still did not have enough of this crystalline substance at my disposal then, I sent him paprikas. My colleague was cured. But later we tried in vain to obtain the same thera- peutic effect with pure vitamin C. Guided by my earlier studies into the peroxidase system, I investigated with my friend St. Rusznyák and his collaborators Armentano and Bentsáth the effect of the other link in the chain, the flavones. Certain members of this group of substances, the flava- none hesperidin (Fig. 5) and the formerly unknown eriodictyolglycoside, a mixture of which we had isolated from lemons and named citrin, now had the same therapeutic effect as paprika itself. It is still too early on in our experience for us to make any definitive statements. But it does seem that these substances possess great biological activity. They influence most ob-
OXIDATION, ENERGY TRANSFER, VITAMINS
449
viously the capillary blood vessels, whose permeability and resistance suffer gravely in many disease states. These dyes are able to restore the state of affairs to normal, and to judge by the first experiences, it seems that these substances will enrich the doctor’s inventory with a really useful new weapon for him to fight illnesses with. Our experiments made it probable that cer- tain members of this group possess vitamin-like properties. For this reason I called the substance vitamin P. Unfortunately these vitamin-like properties have not yet been successfully demonstrated in a completely irreproachable and reproducible fashion....
Notice the comment on the Vitamin P component.
It's a complex and not an isolate.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ ... ecture.pdf
And from the presentation speech by Professor E. Hammarsten, member of the Staff of Professors of the Royal Caroline Institute, on December 10, 1937
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ ... press.html